Malvina Reynolds: The Poetess of Protest
By Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho
nickgier@roadrunner.com
Love is something if you give it away,
Give it away, give it away.
Love is something if you give it away,
You end up having more.
"The Magic Penny" by Malvina Reynolds
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
--"Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds
They've got the world in their
pocket,
They can shake it, they can rock it,
They can kick it for a goal.
They've got the world in their pocket,
But their pocket's got a hole.
"The World in Their Pocket" by Malvina Reynolds
Every Wednesday this column is broadcast on Radio Free Moscow in Moscow, Idaho. Last week the station was doing its first ever on-air fundraising last week and the DJ I was working with played a tune by Malvina Reynolds, whose famous song "Little Boxes" is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Pete Seeger.
Reynolds was born to Jewish immigrant parents in San Francisco in 1900. Because her parents spoke out against America's involvement in World War I, she was denied a high school diploma. Her teachers still managed to get her into UC Berkeley where she went all the way to a Ph.D. in Romance philology.
It is important to remember that at the turn of the century an American's right to protest was severely restricted. Many striking workers were shot by Pinkerton detectives, and the Governor of Illinois blamed the Haymarket Riot of 1886 on these hired guns. The Molokans, Russian pacifists who protested World War I on religious grounds, were put in solitary confinement in Leavenworth. As historian Raymond F. Gregory writes: "They were manacled nine hours a day in a standing position and forbidden to read, write, or even speak." Evan Thomas, brother of the socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas, was in Leavenworth with the Molokans, and he was also placed in solitary confinement when he spoke out against this inhumane treatment. Major newspapers took up the pacifists' cause and President Wilson ordered that the cruelty cease.
Reynolds finished her Ph.D. in 1938, but as a woman, Jew, and socialist she found it difficult to get a college teaching position. She worked in a factory instead and enjoyed writing articles about being a working woman. After the war she started writing songs and turned out over 500 before she died in 1978. Her song "Morningtown Ride" reached the highest on the pop charts. In December 1966 it was, in a recording by The Seekers, in the top five in the United Kingdom.
The most famous song, however, was "Little Boxes," a piece that resonated with millions who felt constricted and alienated by the conformity of an increasingly monotone society. While on her way to a performance in La Honda, Reynolds saw a housing development in Daly City. She asked her husband to take the wheel because she "felt a song coming on," and the rest is history. This song had professionals living there and raising yuppie children, but in fact the "little boxes" were built for the working class. Her main points about conformity, however, still stuck.
Except for the fact that the fear is now deflation rather than inflation, Reynolds was prescient in her song "The World in Their Pocket": "There's inflation and pollution/everything's been bought on credit/in this rotten institution/and they waste the gentle people/cause the system has no soul." Reynolds was born at the end of the Gilded Age, but economic inequality is even worse today. In 1894 John D. Rockefeller made $1.25 million, 7,000 times the average American's salary, but hedge fund manager James Simons now makes 38,000 times more than the average worker. Since the election of Ronald Reagan inflation adjusted salaries for ordinary Americans have risen only slightly and they have not been rewarded for their productivity, still the highest in the world.
The song "It Isn't Nice" was banned in Japan for fairly mild lines such as "We have tried negotiations/and the three-man picket line/now our new ways aren't nice when we deal with men of ice/but if that is freedom's price/we don't mind." Reynolds had become the Poetess of Protest and her fans cheered.
In addition to six albums of music for adults, Reynolds also released three albums of children's songs. "Magic Penny" is the most famous of these with memorable lines such as "love is something if you give it away" and "let's go dancing til the break of day." The Children's Music Network created the Magic Penney Award in her honor. The award is a "tribute to people in our community who have dedicated their lives to empowering children through music." Reynolds was given the first award posthumously in 1999.
One her children's songs "It's Up To You" begins with "You might have been born a ladybug, you might have been born a bat," but ends with "You were born a being with a mind and a voice, and the power of choice." That freedom of course includes the choice to withdraw one's labor and to refuse to go to war.
When once asked why she wrote music for children, Reynolds answered: "I care about children, and I think the world is ripping them off, taking away their natural environment and much more than that—the natural progression of their tradition—and leaving them stripped, uneasy, uncomfortable, and in deep trouble."